There is increasing concern about deteriorating quality of domestic water supplies. In order to determine water quality, more and more testing is being conducted to determine the presence of pesticides, nitrates, microorganisms, metals, hydrocarbons, and other contaminants which are undesirable as constituents of domestic water supplies.
Testing is most difficult in small scale water supplies, such as private farm and residence wells, because of the trouble and cost of taking samples and transporting them to laboratories for analysis. The testing of such water systems is also rendered less accurate by this approach because the samples are relatively small quantities taken at a specific time or times and therefore do not necessarily include contaminants which may appear intermittently or periodically. For example, spring runoff may flush pesticides and nitrates from farm land toward lowland areas where wells are often located. This may cause an increase in pesticide and nitrate levels in domestic water supplies dependent on various factors, such as the depth of the aquifer, casing of well shaft, and the permeability of the overlying soil. Because of these and other factors, testing may be conducted at a time of the year demonstrating reduced levels or increased levels of contaminants. This reduces the reliability of such testing.
Where testing is done at specific times and the contamination problem is intermittent rather than seasonally periodic, then the reliability problem is even more significant. An intermittent contamination problem may pose significant short term exposures without necessarily leaving sufficient residue for accurate detection at later times.
Laboratory testing of domestic water supplies also has associated costs which reduce the frequency with which laboratory analyses can be run to determine the presence of contaminants. In large scale water systems frequent testing must be conducted and the arrangements for doing so can be efficiently arranged and the cost spread over thousands of consumers. With private or small scale water systems testing on a repeated basis can only be justified on a cost basis if there is a problem or suspected problem of significant concern. This increases the risk that millions of private water systems are not being adequately tested to provide satisfactory monitoring of water quality. In reality almost all small scale water systems are not monitored in any significant way unless a problem has been perceived or is suspected.
If contaminants are heavy metals, low level radioactive particles, or organics of low to medium toxicity, such contaminants may be present for long periods of time before noticeable effects occur. The noticeable effects may be serious and irreversible with long term poisoning or cancer as potential resulting effects. These health concerns have increased the need for the efficient and accurate testing of domestic water supplies.
Thus there has been a need in the art for more acceptable water quality testing. Particularly there has been a need for water quality testing systems which will provide effective medium to long term monitoring of water quality at low cost for small domestic water systems and wells. The novel systems described herein provide a significant step in the art of monitoring of such water supplies.